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How Facebook’s Oracular Algorithm Determines the Fates of Startups

nytimes.com

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Re: How Facebook’s Oracular Algorithm Determines the Fates of Startups

#31

Post by leggomylibro »

nihonde wrote: post #26
ballenf wrote: post #8

How Facebook determines ad placement in news feeds: > Millions of auctions take place every minute as users across Facebook load their feeds. ... The algorithm is constantly learning, using past results to inform how it weighs bids in the next auction. The intent, Facebook says, is to maximize value for everybody: to pair the advertiser with its likeliest customers, and to show ads that users want to see . And, of co…

And yet, advertisers still have no meaningful ROI, because it's never in the platform's interest to overachieve on this count. And, users are still very much annoyed by distracting, irrelevant, or overly-targeted ads.

Maybe users just don't want to see many of these ads, full stop.

So they're really pairing the ads with people who are least likely to complain. That kind of shifts how I view the incentives.

Re: How Facebook’s Oracular Algorithm Determines the Fates of Startups

#32

Post by amelius »

d4l3k wrote: post #24
amelius wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that it leaks information. If I place an ad for paperclips targeted at cat-lovers, then if you click on my ad and buy paperclips, I know that you are a cat-lover.

They already allow you to target groups like that. The algorithm doesn't leak anything more.

I'm not sure what you mean. It leaks the targeted group, that was the point.

Re: How Facebook’s Oracular Algorithm Determines the Fates of Startups

#33

Post by nihonde »

maxpupmax wrote: post #30
nihonde wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet, advertisers still have no meaningful ROI, because it's never in the platform's interest to overachieve on this count. And, users are still very much annoyed by distracting, irrelevant, or overly-targeted ads.

Why do you say that there's no meaningful ROI? I know a lot of marketers and advertisers who have built great businesses off of Facebook Ads. Agree that we need to improve the quality of ads across the board.

I will answer your question with another: what metric are you using to measure ROI?

Edit: When you say you know lots of "marketers and advertisers" that are making money from ads, are you referring to resellers and providers of ad inventory and/or analytics, or are you referring to people who actually sell goods and services other than marketing and advertising inventory?

Re: How Facebook’s Oracular Algorithm Determines the Fates of Startups

#34

Post by mbesto »

amelius wrote: post #32
d4l3k wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They already allow you to target groups like that. The algorithm doesn't leak anything more.

I'm not sure what you mean. It leaks the targeted group, that was the point.

I'm not sure I understand your point. It only leaks a subset of data (cat lovers who have an intent to buy paperclips) and is hardly valuable at scale to anyone for anything other than prospecting new customers.

Re: How Facebook’s Oracular Algorithm Determines the Fates of Startups

#35

Post by ThrustVectoring »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #2

I think most people overlook the intelligence value that GAFAM + Tencent have over nearly every other company on the planet. I don't know of any company out there that doesn't use one or more services from these companies which means you're giving them business intelligence about your activities even if you never talk with one of their BD/CD people. And make no mistake that business intelligence is absolutely one of…

I'm honestly surprised that these companies haven't started extracting business intelligence information from their data flows and using it to make investment decisions in public companies. Surely there's a correlation between how often people search for "JC Penny" and JC Penny's earnings. And these companies have far more data than that, alongside a giant pile of money that they can use to fund an investment arm.

Re: How Facebook’s Oracular Algorithm Determines the Fates of Startups

#36

Post by dhimes »

forkLding wrote: post #12

I've used FB ads before for business purposes and I feel its a lot more accessible to SMBs than your standard advertising agency or news media group where you have to phone up, wait for a quote and then have not-so-transparent results where you have to be constantly in touch with the news media group/agency. FB ads is definitely improvement in terms of the time spent and approachability, cost on the other hand depend…

One of the things these platforms do is allow you to optimize your message quickly by gauging response.

Re: How Facebook’s Oracular Algorithm Determines the Fates of Startups

#37

Post by matsur »

nihonde wrote: post #33
maxpupmax wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you say that there's no meaningful ROI? I know a lot of marketers and advertisers who have built great businesses off of Facebook Ads. Agree that we need to improve the quality of ads across the board.

I will answer your question with another: what metric are you using to measure ROI? Edit: When you say you know lots of "marketers and advertisers" that are making money from ads, are you referring to resellers and providers of ad inventory and/or analytics, or are you referring to people who actually sell goods and services other than marketing and advertising inventory?

People entering and converting through a purchase funnel?

Re: How Facebook’s Oracular Algorithm Determines the Fates of Startups

#38

Post by shostack »

forkLding wrote: post #12

I've used FB ads before for business purposes and I feel its a lot more accessible to SMBs than your standard advertising agency or news media group where you have to phone up, wait for a quote and then have not-so-transparent results where you have to be constantly in touch with the news media group/agency. FB ads is definitely improvement in terms of the time spent and approachability, cost on the other hand depend…

>"then have not-so-transparent results"

I'd argue that Facebook's metrics are not always as transparent as one would hope.

Re: How Facebook’s Oracular Algorithm Determines the Fates of Startups

#39

Post by akanet »

nihonde wrote: post #33
maxpupmax wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you say that there's no meaningful ROI? I know a lot of marketers and advertisers who have built great businesses off of Facebook Ads. Agree that we need to improve the quality of ads across the board.

I will answer your question with another: what metric are you using to measure ROI? Edit: When you say you know lots of "marketers and advertisers" that are making money from ads, are you referring to resellers and providers of ad inventory and/or analytics, or are you referring to people who actually sell goods and services other than marketing and advertising inventory?

Yeah, this is a very strange statement. Many businesses are printing money advertising through Facebook.

Re: How Facebook’s Oracular Algorithm Determines the Fates of Startups

#40

Post by drhousejr »

ben_jones wrote: post #13
lithos wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There already is looking at Russian ad campaigns during the election. and youtube junk videos shown here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15637504 SEO is pretty much the same thing in my opinion.

50% of SEO is convincing non-technical users that they need to pay more for SEO. I imagine this'll be much of the same.

One of the dumbest comments I've read on HN.
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